Tag: personal

Travel & Scotland & Grad School — Oh My!

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Goodness! Where has the time gone? For those of you who have been following this blog from the beginning… hello again, old friends! For those of you who may be new, welcome to the adventure.

It’s been a year since I last posted, and oh so much has happened since! I’ve traveled to more far-flung places than ever before (Myanmar, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Albania and Oman to name a few), found myself a handsome and wonderful boyfriend and then moved across the Atlantic to return to school.

After working four years in the travel industry as an Adventure Guide with Adventures by Disney and on the Expedition Staff for trips around the world by private jet with TCS World Travel and National Geographic, I decided to take a one-year break from travel to pursue a Masters degree. Never one to follow the status quo, I ended up choosing a program on the other side of the world (naturally) and have been living in beautiful Scotland for the last four months attending the University of Edinburgh for a postgraduate degree (MSc) in Entrepreneurship and Innovation! Fitting a Masters program into one year has kept me unbelievably busy to say the least. But as I’ve had a chance to rest during my holiday break, I figured it was time to catch you all up on my life. 

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What Adventure Does

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“Most great adventures work that way. You don’t plan them, you don’t get all the details right, you just do them.” -Bob Goff, Love Does

Think about a book you love. A story treasured from one generation to the next; one so powerful it offers readers insight each year it’s read.

Stories like those have a funny way of sticking to your heart, like snow on frozen ground. Yet it often seems hard to decipher what qualities connect them all to greatness. Is it a complex prose? Captivating dialogue? Or, a meticulously planned storyline?

Maybe.

But when I think of my all-time favorite stories (like Harry Potter, The Alchemist, or the Narnia series), the common theme I find is the unexpected adventure their characters find themselves in.

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Story Feature: Beyond the Stereotype of Young Refugee Men

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Meet Muhammad Ali and Fahad, two individuals who may help you break the stereotype you have of young refugee men in Europe. They were both students from a small Kurdish town in Syria before they fled the war, and have found themselves unable to get farther north than Slovenia on their journey into Europe.

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When I asked them about their hopes for the future, Muhammad responded, “I cannot think of the future I want—I need to go back to school, I need an education for my future. I like to learn and need to learn new languages. We left because of the war and fled through Turkey’s mountains with no food and no water for three days trying to get to Europe. And now we are stuck here. No, I cannot think about the future.”

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Project: Seek the Good

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In the past few weeks I have been asking myself a lot of big questions…

“What does it mean to be a ‘successful’ 20-something just out of university?”

“What is up with all of my friends suddenly getting engaged and married?”

“Does Ryan Seacrest even age?” (Okay, not totally relevant, but just as perplexing.)

But most importantly, I’ve been asking two central questions: If I was doing what I feel I was made for (no limitations), what would that be? And how do I best use my skills and passions in this season of life to give back? Truth be told, I think we often answer questions like these rashly or we give some “canned” answer that sounds great without intending to follow through. I’ve done both, but I wanted to dig deeper. For some reason I felt like these answers should be so easy to find, yet I quickly learned that finding definitive answers to these questions was more like walking through wet cement than a walk in the park.

However, as I’ve slowly waded through these questions one idea has consistently popped up–an idea for telling stories–specifically stories of people working to impact communities on the margins of society.

Considering how much of the media focuses on the darkness and danger in the world, I started asking myself what it would look like to spread the opposite–hope. So much of my life has been built upon the desire to see the good in others and to find hope in a hopeless situation. From the slums in Kenya to the streets of Seattle, I believe there are stories of joy and hope all over the place. The question is not, “do they exist?,” but, “how do we find them?”

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3 Types of Beauty

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The way I see it, there are three types of beauty in life.

The first is the kind that we casually pay lip service to, without attaching any significant value. The second is a beauty that dazzles for a time, but quickly fades because it lacks real substance.

However, the third type of beauty is the one I think we all strive to find. It is a kind that touches your soul in such real ways that it leaves you feeling like your lungs will stop working or that your legs will cease to hold you. It is a beauty that leaves you with sudden tears in your eyes and a smile in your soul. This third type of beauty is one that doesn’t fade easily, it sticks with you and reminds you of a special secret your heart remembers, but your mind does not. A beauty that brings joy, peace, and childlike wonder. It is a beauty that speaks of the place we all came from, somewhere our hearts instinctively tune to when we allow ourselves to hope.

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10 Tips for Authentic Travel

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It’s only been two months since I was last living out of a suitcase, but the travel bug is already starting to nibble again! In the past few years I have had the opportunity to travel to 14 different countries across 4 different continents and I am always anxious to add to that list. I’m enthralled with travel because being in another country strips you of typical comforts and allows you to learn and grow tremendously without the typical limitations we usually put on ourselves. However, this isn’t the way all people choose to travel–and that’s fine. But if you want to see the world, be challenged and infinitely rewarded with an authentic travel experience whether traveling with a group or on your own, these are my tips for you!

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Yours truly in front of the Lennon Wall in Prague, Czech Republic

1.) Make the Choice: Predictability OR Authenticity

Before you leave, pause and decide what kind of travel experience you want. You can travel in comfort by staying in nice hotels, following prescribed travel itineraries to only visit the main attractions, and only seeking the people, foods, and shops that reflect the culture you are familiar with.

You can travel comfortably and still have a great time OR you can choose to embrace a new context by simply immersing yourself in that culture and not paying for a cultural experience wrapped up in an easy to understand package. The next few points illuminate how travel this alternative way…

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Scary-Beautiful Change

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Let me be honest; I’m not a fan of change. You see, I celebrate some changes–like new seasons and scenery–I just hate when change penetrates deep enough to affect my “constants.”

We all have things in our lives that we think of as constants; our childhood homes, families, friendships, even our annual vacation spots. We hold these portions of our lives close to our heart because they can often seem unchangeable in world that is constantly changing. However normal this tendency may seem, I am learning that this is no way to really live.

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A Love Affair with Books

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Processed with VSCOcam with m3 presetLike many love affairs my adoration for books began with considerable resistance on my part. Until I was around eleven I was pretty neutral towards reading. Back then I was far more enamored by early Saturday mornings spent in front of a television than hours of staring at a bundle of paper.

Then one day my parents came up with an ingenious plan I couldn’t refuse; in lieu of an allowance they agreed to pay me one penny for every page I read. As an eleven-year-old I figured I could make bank with this plan. I still remember the next day, going to the library empty-handed, and walking out with a pile of books stacked under my chin, eager to make a whopping $10 over the next few weeks.

What began as a monetary incentive to dive into the world of reading soon morphed into a genuine love for books and what they could unlock—new characters, settings, histories, and fantastic storylines I had never before imagined.

From that day on reading has opened up the world to me in amazing ways. Like a man with poor eyesight gazing up at the stars and only seeing the 10 or 12 most prominent points of light, I had been missing much of the world that was right in front of me. What I needed was to look at the world through the right lens. So, much like that nearsighted man who gapes in awe the first time he looks at the night sky through corrective lenses, reading became my means for seeing and experiencing exciting worlds I never knew existed.

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Let Me Introduce Myself

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Photo by Courtney Bowlden

(photo by Courtney Bowlden)

Who am I? Those three words combine to create a loaded question that few dare to ask and even fewer take time to thoughtfully answer. But don’t worry, I won’t hit you with that one just yet. The purpose of this post is to act as a little introduction. Whether you are reading this for the first time on your phone, in line at a coffee shop, or you merely stumbled across my blog while procrastinating from work (don’t worry, it can wait), let me just say…

Hello and welcome to my new blog, “See, Hear, Explore,”–but you can call it S.H.E. for short!

For years I have had the itch to write, and it is a passion I have indulged sporadically with a travel/personal blog I kept my last two summers in Eastern Europe and through a stack of old journals currently stuffed under my bed. I have shared bits and pieces of my life with the World Wide Web, yet recently yearned to have a single, consistent place to share my thoughts, dreams, stories, and faith in a blog that flows like a journal. I wanted to create this blog so that you can all walk along side me as I experience life the way I truly believe it to be; a grand adventure.

So what inspired the name, “See, Hear, Explore?”

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